Refugees paint conflicting pictures

CHAMAN, Pakistan — At the Chaman border crossing on the road leading to Kandahar, there were conflicting reports Wednesday about fighting in and around the Taliban's southern Afghanistan stronghold.

Taliban fighters retreated into the heart of the Pashtun belt before the rapid advances of Northern Alliance forces capturing Mazar-e Sharif, Herat and Kabul. The Islamic extremist regime, made up of Pashtuns, may be facing opposition now from leaders of Pashtun tribes in their own back yard--the area around Kandahar.

The Pentagon said a number of tribes in southern Afghanistan appear to be opposing the Taliban.

In recent days, reports have varied about who controls the airport on the outskirts of Kandahar. Information was sketchy about whether a gun battle was taking place, and, if so, exactly which group was fighting the Taliban.

Reports have also surfaced that a Pashtun-led resistance may be controlling an area 12 miles from Kandahar.

Opposition forces Wednesday said they seized Kandahar airport and were advancing on the city. Northern Alliance officials, on the other hand, said Kandahar had already fallen into the hands of opposition and tribal rebels.

None of these reports could be independently confirmed. Indeed, people coming from Kandahar into Chaman on Wednesday mostly said the Afghan spiritual center was quiet and the Taliban appeared to be in control.

Rifaat Husain, chairman of Defense and Strategic Studies at Quadi-e-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan, said the Taliban will not give Kandahar up easily.

The only other option would be fleeing into the mountains to wage a guerrilla war.

"Kandahar: They will fight for every last inch," Husain said. "If they lose it, that's the end of the Taliban as a political power."

The Chaman border crossing lies on the ancient Silk Road linking the Far East with Central Asia, Iran and the Indian subcontinent. It is a three-hour drive from Kandahar, Afghanistan's 18th Century capital, a desert oasis strategically built with towering walls and a massive ditch. Merchants shuttle between the two cities daily, bringing wares--some of it smuggled--from Afghanistan into Pakistan.

Kher Mohamed, a truck driver, said Kandahar was teeming with armed Taliban fighters, some with rocket launchers. He said the Taliban was checking people for weapons and confiscating Kalashnikov rifles from taxi drivers.

He said the city was quiet. He had driven by the airport during the afternoon and had seen no signs of fighting. Some Taliban soldiers were heading back to Herat to fight, he said, while thousands of others had been shifted to the mountains around the city and sent to the Afghan town of Spin Boldak.

Troops moved to Spin Boldak were assigned to prevent anti-Taliban elements from entering via Chaman, he said.

But others painted a different picture of the city.

"Everything was chaos," Haji Wali Muhammad said. "The people are angry with the Taliban, and many tribal elders have said if fighting enters the city, they too will fight against the Taliban."

Muhammad, a dried-fruit merchant returning from Kandahar late Wednesday, said there was fighting on the city outskirts.

He said men fighting with opposition leader Gul Agha Shirzai were battling Taliban forces for control of the airport. Shirzai, a mujahedeen commander and the former governor of Kandahar, has been based in Quetta, Pakistan, a two-hour drive east of Chaman. According to witnesses, Shirzai entered Afghanistan with some 1,000 supporters late Tuesday.

His aides say he and other exiled Afghans have been reaching out to moderate elements of the Taliban in recent weeks, trying to convince them to defect and support plans for a loya jirga, or tribal council, that will bring a broad-based government into power.